About a year ago I decided to abandon my design career in America. I arrived in Seoul with little money and even less knowledge of the Korean language. I'm currently teaching English to adults as well as some children.

The question of integration is tricky. After over a year here I still don't feel fully integrated. Sure, I've picked up some language and can haggle in the shops but a lot of the time I realize that I stick out like a sore thumb in a crowd. There's all kinds of little customs you should adhere to but that kind of stuff I picked up in the first few weeks. Overall though integration is a slow process.
As for what prompted me to come here, there are many factors. One was that I wanted to get out of the states for an extended amount of time. See what it's like. I had never been to an Asian country before and I had a friend teaching here. He knew that I wanted to travel and suggested that if I want to travel and make money, teach!
Another reason for my urgency to travel was that due to the economic crisis I saw many people around me losing their homes and life savings. People who saved their entire lives so they could travel. I swore that wouldn't happen to me so I made a resolution to go. Go now!
That's kind of the short answer. I can explain in more detail about something specific if you like.

No, I didn't like Korean food before coming. I actually didn't really know anything about the food other than that it was apparently spicy. The first few weeks we're pretty rough and it took me about 3 months to really enjoy it.

Seoul is beautiful! All the palaces and old architecture, well, it doesn't blend perfectly but, it blends. Sometimes I feel like I'm living in a mix of hyper futurism and old tradition. Probably because I am. Seoul is an interesting place to be although my one complaint is that there aren't enough green places to roam around in. If you do find a nice forest to visit you will never find privacy.

Getting the job was easy. The process to be able to get the job was difficult. Not so much difficult, but a lot of waiting. There's basically 3 rules to get to be able to teach here.

Be from an English speaking country.

Have a university degree. Any one will do, they're not picky.

Have a clean criminal background.

All of these things you have to obtain and get them certified, appostilled and verified. All the paperwork from start to finish took about 3 months.

After I got all that together I started applying for jobs. There are thousands of jobs posted everyday. Basically I just found a few I liked and tried. Had some Skype and phone interviews and done.

Fortunately for me, Korea doesn't require a lot of certifications. Most other countries require a TESL certification or something like it to teach. Korea seems to not really care about that. My background is in graphic and industrial design, nowhere close to and English, literature or teaching degree.

If you come from a good university then it is pretty easy to get a job in Korea. The private english schools like to tell people that they have top university teachers. You just have to have a bachelors, not do any drugs that will show up on a normal employee drug test, and generally be a normal person and be able to hack it alone in a foreign country. If you think teaching in Korea will be anything like The Dead Poets Society, it's nothing like that. Generally, they give you the curriculum you have to teach, and you just prep that twice a week. Then you go hit the soju hard.

I highly recommend it! I think it's even enfluenced my design work for the better. Of course I plan this to be a temporary break from my professional career and hope to someday return to design. There's even design opportunities here in Seoul.

First I would try looking at Dave's ESL Cafe if you're looking for a job in Korea. There are some larger schools like Pagoda and Wall Street Institute but also there's lots of smaller private schools, aka Hagwans. The schools in Korea provide you with housing but don't expect a lot. They're generally pretty small.

The pay depends on whether you teach children or adults. For children I think you can expect a base pay around 2.3 - 2.5 million ₩, about $2300. They generally offer more vacation time per year too. I get a week. Blah. Adults, I make a base pay of 2.1 million. You get paid more to deal with kids. I opted out of that bs.But if you add on the cost of the apartment that's another .5 million.

Keep in mind that since your rent is covered and subways are cheap, your only expenses will be utilities and going out. Going out,however,can be costly. The social life is a bit crazy here.

Hope this helps. Feel free to follow up with more questions if I didn't cover something in your post. It's late, and I'm drunk...

It's definitely on topic! Gangnam style was crazy here and still is. I can still hear that song everyday playing from electronics, mobile phones and cosmetic shops. Of course the craze has died down a little. But, strangely enough the first time I heard that song was on buzzfeed. The article said "this is what's big is South Korea these days" I was like, huh, I live here and I don't know it.

It's a funny thing, but all day at work we have CNN on tv. The American news networks seem to make a big deal out of everything N.Korea doesn't while everyone here in Seoul doesn't seem to give it much thought or attention. I myself am not too concerned.

I really had no opinion before I came so it's hard to judge. Overall the people are friendly enough and a little shy, but that's okay because I am too. Like anywhere in the world, all people are different. I've been surprised by the kindness of some and the rudeness of others, especially from the older crowd on the latter.

I have yet to attempt the punching machine. There's one behind my workplace in jongno. I have, however, mastered the game where you move the rod up and to the right to poke a prize off the shelf. B-)

I think your 20s is the perfect time to do it. Get out of the country and travel while you're still young. Not that I'm particularly old, I just wish I would have done this long ago.

Anyway the move was hectic. I had an apartment full of stuff to get rid of. A lifetime of stuff actually. It took a long time to get rid of everything and sell my car.

Basically all I brought with me was a suitcase full of clothing and a few personal items. The school set me up with an apartment so all I needed was kitchen items and a rice cooker, which are cheap enough on Craigslist here.

All the visa work information can be found online, hope you'll excuse my laziness to write it all out. Basically the first step you want to do is send away for your FBI background check. It takes 2 months to receive it back and after that it's valid for 6 months. You want to do this when you're getting close to leaving.

If you look in one of the other replies I go into it a little more deeply. But basically those three things are what you need. I had no previous experience before I came. I think eventually they might get a little more stringent with the rules because there's such a huge influx of foreigners here.